Ian Chee's thoughts on strategy and its intersection with technology and culture

It’s interesting the subtle shifts in technology that effect how we interact. These happen every day with us barely noticing and each of them in isolation really don’t mean much. But compounded by a hundred, a thousand, tens of thousands of these small actions every day, the aggregate impact will be mind boggling.

Two subtle examples:

Snapchat’s addition of a birthday lens. While seemingly innocent, it represents another form of clever data gathering where we as consumers are paying for free access with our information. As they say information is power, in todays world, information is also money. Read the full article here:

The other subtle update was to Siri, a week ago I got a little reminder that Siri is always on once plugged in, transforming the virtual assistant from a passive service to an active one. In one fell swoop, Apple now competes directly with echo (or Alexa). And in that one small way, the product moved from the potential as a mobile assistant to a home assistant.

All these little things happen around us everyday without us barely noticing. As these small changes compound it will be interesting to see how we engage in just a few years.

I love how the internet has changed so many things. I still remember my first job in brand strategy, and the cult like focus on consistency.

This video below do’s a nice job of delivering an understanding of logo systems such as the ones used by Google, the Hillary campaign, their general role and the reasons for their growing ubiquity based on the ease at which one can simply change pixels over stationary.

In 2016, and in a marketing world where we are often consumed with bits and bytes, our ability to target, our ability to analyze past behavior. The art of story telling is still a large part of a brands narrative.

Now one can say that this piece of content has limited legs, it dosen’t really drive to an action nor dos it create a compelling use case. BUT, it dos create a perception, one of the most powerful things a brand can own and one of the hardest things in our industry to valuate. Enjoy and here’s to a great 2016!

Tuesdays with Toni is a little project we’ve been working on at MRY strategy, lead by Toni and inspired by Portia. The idea of thought leadership at consulting entities tend to be relatively one dimensional focused on the quantitative seismic shifts happening in an industry. As an example; the impact of mobile adoption on app usage, the rise of social media.

We decided to look at the task of thought leadership a little differently. Instead of being focused on the quantitative trend, lets focus on the impact this trend has on behavior and attitudes. What new ways can we explore information and ideas and how is culture reacting to all of this.

Napping in the office has recently been a topic that I’ve noticed can be a little bit polarizing. It seems to harken to a shift in how we see work and workplace productivity.

In the past 3 months, I’ve caught an intern in full snooze at his desk with his hood over his face. A strategist sleeping on the couch and our HR team opened a meditation room. Times are changing and how we manage has to change with it.

Read the full article here at Campaign: http://www.campaignlive.com/author/4587/Ian-Chee

After doing this study, I just want to sit on a beach without a smart phone.

A study we recently did to look into the shifting habits of Millennials. The new consumer has different habits and different ways of working, yet change is uncomfortable and often slow. This study explores this shifting paradigm and follows some key implications that brands and businesses need to consider in this new world.

I’m often asked what are the best ways to present and convince. Though a presentation might not be the same as a masterful story told, I think there are some similar themes at play. I’ve always respected the work of the moth and thought this was a particularly good break down.